"I never killed anybody" - Charles Manson
"I'm a petty car thief" - Charles Manson
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/charles-manson-is-not-a-serial-killer_n_1422172.html
Charles Manson Is Not A Serial Killer, Experts Say
Charles Manson is a notorious inmate and arguably an American icon of evil but, according to experts, the aging convict is not a serial killer or a mass murderer, as he is typically described.
While the terms "serial killer" and "mass murderer" are often used synonymously, experts distinguish between the two. Scott A. Bonn, a serial killer expert and assistant professor of sociology at Drew University, said it is time to set the record straight.
"Manson is a fascinating, infamous individual, but he was not a serial killer or a mass murderer," Bonn told The Huffington Post.
"Technically, he never murdered anybody, but the way people look at Manson is that he is such a charismatic individual that had the ability to control people. Essentially, all of his followers were doing his bidding. They were doing what he wanted them to do, when he wanted them to do it, how he wanted to do it. His followers were an extension of him."
"If laws were real they wouldn't need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn't be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that's a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it."
"Have you ever seen a demonstrable example of equality in your entire life? Can it be glimpsed in any dog show or classroom? In any ping pong game or chess match? Of course not. It is a philosophical abstraction, something nowhere to be found in nature."
- Boyd Rice
"The mind is everything. What you think you become."
"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path."
- Buddha
“Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…
…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable “value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’?â€
- Ted Bundy
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
- Lily Tomlin
“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.â€
- V.S. Ramachandran
It's more like a piece of literature, than a quote... but it's great...
http://www.namebase.org/richnote.html
A note of appreciation from the rich
Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.
On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it -- you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!
As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.
Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us -- and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.
Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!
You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."
Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening -- instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "Niggers," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.
We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!
Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system -- robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.
So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" -- without even knowing it!
That's about as much control as someone possesses over a candle's fire, save for the lack of bitching a candle does before being snuffed out.
Murder's closer to controlling someone's fear than their life, and even then that's only the case if the murderer's show-y. A murderer merely possesses life briefly and chooses to misuse it the same way a kid might enjoy toppling an assembled tower of toy blocks. For a word as powerful as "control" being referenced for controlling a life, it ought to mean more than just affecting the binary nature of it.
THIS is closer to controlling a life, and to boot it still caries the power rush of holding someone at gunpoint as opposed to subtle possession:
It's sad how many people have reenacted that scene as a class project. More than likely they were suckered in by the Noir style, and would have responded entirely differently to the book. They pay too much attention to his attitude and counter-culture angst without even gauging how sick the motivations behind them are, sort of like Joker-hype.